I am a writer and editor living and working in New York City. I am Editor of the Roosevelt Institute's Next New Deal blog and my writing has appeared on The Nation, The Atlantic, GOOD Magazine, AlterNet, and others. From women's issues to wonking out, I'm always looking for the stories that can shape the debate. Previously, I was a financial reporter and head of the energy sector at mergermarket, a newswire that is part of the Financial Times Group. Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/brycecovert.

Six Ways The GOP Platform Is Bad News For Women's Bottom Line

Even with a possible hurricane barreling toward Tampa, the Republican National Convention kicked off yesterday. Amid the pomp and circumstance, perhaps the only bit of substance to come of it will be the Republican Party platform, a document that cobbles together a guiding vision for the Party over the next four years. While these documents are far from binding, they do help to give a sense of where each party stands. And, perhaps unsurprisingly given some recent sentiments that leaked out of the Party lately, this year’s may deal some serious blows to women’s finances and economic opportunities.

The full platform hasn’t been released yet – it will be voted on this afternoon – but Politico managed to grab a leaked draft version. While the document may change before it’s officially released, what’s in the draft can give us a sense of how a vision of government that adheres to the Republican platform will be bad news for women.

1. Repealing ObamaCare

Perhaps one of the longest, and certainly the feistiest, sections is on repealing the Affordable Care Act, or “ObamaCare.” There’s no beating around the bush in this document:

Republican victories in the November elections will guarantee that it is never implemented. Congressional Republicans are committed to its repeal; and a Republican President, on the first day in office, will use his legitimate waiver authority under that law to halt its progress and then will sign its repeal. Then the American people, through the free market, can advance affordable and responsible healthcare reform that meets the needs and concerns of patients and providers.

The thing is, the free market wasn’t working so well for women before the ACA. Where the practice of gender rating, charging women more for the same health services, wasn’t outright banned, nearly all of the best selling plans cost women more money. Women have also been denied care because of “pre-existing conditions” that have more to do with being a woman than being sick, such as pregnancy, C-sections, and sexual abuse. The ACA addresses those problems and more, helping women to better access health insurance and covering preventative services such as pap smears and contraception co-pay-free. Just the ability to access contraception is a huge economic boost for women, reducing the amount they spend while better ensuring they can control their fertility and head to work.

2. Controlling Your Fertility

Speaking of fertility: the platform, perhaps unsurprisingly, is staunchly anti-choice. It even crops up in the ObamaCare section:

We…affirm the dignity of women by protecting the sanctity of human life. Numerous studies have shown that abortion endangers the health and well-being of women, and we stand firmly against it.

This despite the fact that the ability to control one’s fertility, including access to abortion when needed and wanted, is hugely important to women who want to be in the workforce and develop their careers. But it goes beyond just abortion. In a section on protecting religious consciences, it says:

No healthcare professional or organization should ever be required to perform, provide for, withhold, or refer for a medical service against their conscience. This is especially true of the religious organizations which deliver a major portion of America’s healthcare, a service rooted in the charity of faith communities.

Thinking like this has led pharmacists to deny women the birth control they need and some Catholic universities to deny contraception coverage in their health plans. In case it wasn’t clear that your birth control doesn’t matter to the GOP, in its statement on “The Sanctity and Dignity of Human Life,” it says:

Faithful to the “self-evident” truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children.

This language is strikingly similar to that used by the Personhood movement, which defines “person” as beginning at the moment of fertilization. Such a definition, beyond making abortion completely illegal, would also endanger in vitro fertilization and some forms of contraception. But the ability to use contraception has been a huge factor in women flooding the workplace since the 1950s – and their ability to stay there and pursue careers. Take that away and women will face huge struggles in finding and keeping work that brings in the income they need.

3. “Reforming” Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security

What about women who are elderly and less well-off? They should be deeply concerned about the platform’s insistence on “reforming” our social safety net. Here’s what Republicans want to do to Medicaid:

We propose to let [Republican Governors and State legislatures pursue current changes] and more by block-granting the program to the States, providing the States with the flexibility to design programs that meet the needs of their low income citizens.

Women make up 70 percent of Medicaid’s beneficiaries. Yet the Urban Institute has estimated that block granting the program would lead states to drop 14–27 million people from its rolls by 2021.

And Medicare:

We will save Medicare by modernizing it, by empowering its participants, and by putting it on a secure financial footing… The first step is to move the two programs away from their current unsustainable defined-benefit entitlement model to a fiscally sound defined-contribution model…

Women also make up the majority of Medicare recipients and are more likely to depend heavily on it, as twice as many elderly women live in poverty as compared to men. While the platform’s plans for Medicare are vague, they are similar to what Paul Ryan has proposed in his budget – and if the Party were to follow his vision, replacing Medicare’s guaranteed health coverage with payments to the elderly to buy insurance on the private market, many will find themselves with less coverage. The payments in Ryan’s plan would increase so slowly that spending could drop by as much as 40 percent – leaving seniors, many of them women, with far less access to insurance and care.

And Social Security:

While no changes should adversely affect any current or near-retiree, comprehensive reform should address our society’s remarkable medical advances in longevity and allow younger workers the option of creating their own personal investment accounts as supplements to the system… Born in an old industrial era beyond the memory of most Americans, it is long overdue for major change…

This despite the fact that Social Security is one of our country’s greatest successes, keeping 20 million Americans out of poverty and supplying the only source of income for about a third of women over 65. This plan is somewhat similar to Ryan’s previous one to partially privatize the program by diverting workers’ payroll tax contributions into private retirement accounts. That leaves these vulnerable seniors, many of them women, at the whims of the stock market – and anyone who lived through 2007 and 2008 knows just how well that can go.

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I’m saying the whole point of insurance is a shared cost. So maybe you’d like to only cover the illnesses you would get. But you have to pay for people who get diabetes, cancer, a broken leg, etc. – even if you never get those. I guess that seems unfair to you as well. To suggest that men only pay for your gender’s conditions is the same thing. We are all humans, we are all in it together.

I agree insurance is a shared costs. Doesn’t mean you have to share the cost 100% equally. It’s already progressive and tilted towards women as it is. You want more? We ALREADY spend more on womens costs EXCLUDING child birth. We spend more on womens illness like breasts cancer etc using PUBLIC funds. Women already outlive men. Now you want more services and free contraceptives? A war on women? Really?

Really? Companies? What about using actuaries like we do now for just about all insurance.

But I hear your point. How about we all start at the same ‘cheap’ insurance level. As we use more we can start paying more. Then have a cap to how much more the most expensive level is compared to the cheapest. We can add financial assistance to those who can’t afford it.

That would give us a system where people actual have some personal responsibility and those that use more pay more. The everything is free concept just doesn’t work.

Really? Companies? What about using actuaries like we do now for just about all insurance.

But I hear your point. How about we all start at the same ‘cheap’ insurance level. As we use more we can start paying more. Then have a cap to how much more the most expensive level is compared to the cheapest. We can add financial assistance to those who can’t afford it.

That would give us a system where people actually have some personal responsibility and those that use more pay more. The everything is free concept just doesn’t work.

Really? Separate companies? What about using actuaries like we do now for just about all insurance.

But I hear your point. How about we all start at the same ‘cheap’ insurance level. As we use more we can start paying more. Then have a cap to how much more the most expensive level is compared to the cheapest. We can add financial assistance to those who can’t afford it.

That would give us a system where people actually have some personal responsibility and those that use more pay more. The everything is free concept just doesn’t work.

I was amused at the so called war on women in general. But I’ll take your bait. The GOP doesn’t want reproductive choices forced on the masses. Is that hard to understand? The left things it’s about taking away choices. The other side of the coin is that the right things you are forcing those choices on them.

Why should contraception be free? Why should abortion be taken lightly? You don’t hear the right going around accusing the left that they love to take unborn babies from the womb and rip the arms/legs off etc.(Partial birth abortion.) But the left looovvvesss to make it seem like all of the right will force all abortion to be illegal. It’s simply not true.

You don’t need a company to offer insurance that covers that. Actually I think a company that doesn’t believe in that(Church related) shouldn’t be forced to offer it. You can get it elsewhere simple enough. Or are people that inept?

Oh, and to try and stay on the topic I was talking about. Again, all these free services for women just mean one thing for a man. We’ll foot the bill. We already pay more into the system while women get the majority of the benefit.

How about this. You take 50% of all the money available in healthcare and spend it anyway you want. That way men can’t complain. I bet your free contraception won’t make the cut then. Actually it would mean some services already provided would need to be cut since women use more than their fair share.